Beyond Jealousy (6 page)

"And?"

"And I need to..." Ace waved a hand at Jared. "Fuck, man. I need to do something. Make a move.
Not
making one hasn't kept me from hurting her."

Jared shrugged. "You don't sound too sure about it."

Because he'd started to make a move last night, and she'd bolted. "She's nervous now, because I fucked up. And wooing skittish women is your specialty. I like the ones ready to take a running leap onto my dick."

Jared choked on his whiskey. "I'm not sure what you want me to tell you, since she's in love with you already. She didn't get that way because of pretty tricks. She fell for
you
."

He asked Jared the question he couldn't ask Rachel, because it would have sounded mocking or condescending or, worst of all, fragile and terrified. "
Why?
"

"Love is blind, right? I mean, I think you're swell, but it wouldn't matter if you were the biggest fucking asshole left on planet Earth." He shrugged. "Why her? What's so great about Rachel?"

Ace stiffened, more irritated than he wanted to admit, even if all Jared had done was turn the question around. It felt like an insult, one he wanted to answer with a little brotherly face-punching, but Jared was watching him, waiting for a response.

Except the truth might be as harsh as a fist to the face, because the thing that had first entranced him about Rachel was the thing that terrified him. "She's not like us. She never learned how to lie."

But Jared only nodded. "Makes sense. It was never your favorite part of the job."

Maybe not, but maybe he was still lying to himself. It wasn't like all the other women in his life had been experts at deception. Some had been as guileless as Rachel. Some had been smart and some had been funny, and others still had given him big eyes while being both. And he loved women. He loved the filthy temptresses and the newly, earnestly horny and the women who fucked for money. Rachel wasn't special because they were
less
...

She was special because they were all fucking amazing, and she still felt like more.

There was no one trait, no logical reason. Nothing he could point to and say,
This, this makes her better than those other women.
No defining moment where his honest lust for everything she represented had slipped over the line into this gnawing, obsessive hunger he couldn't escape.

She was a work of art. Jared saw the paint and the canvas and a few pleasant shapes. Ace felt the earth move.

Jared made a soft noise of indulgent amusement. "A rhetorical question," he declared. "All I meant was that you may never know her reasons, and does it really matter? Unless you doubt what she feels, that is."

He might have, if the hurt in her eyes hadn't been so damn real. "I guess not."

"Don't even start. I've seen her look at you." Jared paused and tilted his head. "What about Cruz?"

The question stopped him cold. He'd been running on adrenaline, on the horror of realizing what he'd done to Rachel, and fucking
hell
. Hurting the man would be like sinking a knife into the back of a brother. Worse, because somewhere in all those muddled rationalizations, Cruz had started looking like more than paint splattered across a canvas, too.

No matter which way he turned, he was crushing something fragile. "I don't know."

"But you need to figure it out."

Yeah, he really did. And maybe, for once, he needed to make a decision while he wasn't strung out on booze and self-indulgent angst. Ace drained his drink and slumped back on the couch. "It'd be great if you'd go get stupid over some sweet little piece of ass. Then you could be the idiot for a while."

Jared grinned. "I have my idiotic moments. I keep them to myself, that's all."

"Come on, brother. Solidarity. Tell me one."

Silence. Then a rough sigh. "I fell in love once. It didn't work. That's why I don't recommend it."

Ace had never seen evidence of it in all the years he'd known Jared--but then, he might not have. That was the one lesson they'd all learned, even Ace--you showed the world your strengths because they earned you respect, and your flaws because they earned you trust. But your weaknesses you held tight in your heart.

Gia struggled to remember she couldn't rescue every wounded woman she stumbled across. Ace couldn't stand seeing hookers mistreated, because paying for someone's body didn't give you the right to leave marks on their heart and soul. And Jared didn't trust himself with feelings, as if he was convinced that dropping his pragmatism for a few moments would end in an emotional bender he'd never survive.

They were all broken, right along the lines drawn by their respective fucked-up childhoods, and for the first time in his life he didn't envy Jared. Because whatever was going on between him and Rachel and Cruz hurt like hell, but the pain was a pinprick compared to the satisfaction when Cruz growled his name or Rachel whimpered it.

If he could just figure out a way for both of them to do it at the same time, they could tear his heart out of his chest and burn it to ash, and he'd still go to hell happy.

Avoiding Ace was easy. Avoiding Cruz turned out to be harder.

When Rachel edged through the warehouse door, she almost dropped the box of bottles she held. She managed to catch them--barely--between her hip and the doorjamb, then stood there stupidly as Cruz did one-armed pushups in the center of the cage. His torso gleamed with sweat under the harsh lights, and his dark hair clung to his temples. He grunted softly with every push off the rough concrete, a noise that made her stomach clench and the back of her neck prickle.

She considered turning around and walking back out, liquor restocking be damned. But fuck that--she was an O'Kane, dammit. She wasn't a coward, not even when presented with this. So she got a better grip on the box and let the door slam shut behind her. "Good morning."

He looked up without breaking his rhythm. "Rachel. Need some help?"

The situation was too ridiculous for words. An ill-advised laugh bubbled up in her chest, and she bit her lip. "I wouldn't dream of interrupting your incredibly difficult workout, not when you're making it look so stupidly easy."

His mouth quirked. Barely a smile, but the warmth in his eyes had more than her neck prickling. "Let me finish this set, and I'll haul boxes for you."

"You don't have to."

He polished off five more pushups in quick succession before rocking to his knees. "I want to."

A bead of sweat rolled down the center of his chest. Rachel dropped the box on the bar with a clatter. "I'm just making sure everything's topped off before the party in a couple of days."

Cruz hopped out of the cage, snagging a towel tossed over the door on his way by. "That's right. Six is drinking in. And Jade, too?"

"Yeah. Should be a good time."

"Hey."

She paused with her hand around a bottle of tequila and looked up at him. He stood there, watching her, his hands locked around both ends of the towel around his neck. "What?"

He met her eyes squarely, and the warmth was still there, but so was something else. Something darker, that dangerous edge she'd never seen in him until she'd tried to shove him away for his own good. "You don't have to keep running from me. If you and Ace have a thing now..."

Oh God, he must have heard something, even
seen
them. "It's not like that. He and I have always had a thing--just like you and me. It's always there, no matter what."

After a moment, he nodded. "I know how much it hurts to be pulled in opposite directions. I don't want that for you."

"But you can't stop it." No one could, not since the beginning. Maybe not even then. "It's not about what you've done or might do, Cruz. It's about who you
are
. What it does to me when you--"

She bit off the words, but he wouldn't let her hold them back. "When I do what, Rachel?"

It felt like balancing on a ledge--and one wrong move would tip her off it. "When you look at me." She had to close her eyes. "When you touch me."

The bar stood between them, but that wasn't enough protection when he could just reach over it. His fingertips grazed her cheek, warm and electric, and she sucked in a breath. "What if I stopped pulling you away from him?"

No matter what either of them did, it would hurt. "I don't know what to do," she confessed.

"I do." His touch returned, lower this time. Brushing the corner of her mouth, so close to her lips. "But I need to know one thing."

She swayed toward him. "What?"

"Did you ever want us both? Or did I just get in the way?"

That brought her back to reality. She jerked away from him, snapping her eyes open. "Do you really think that?"

"No." He let his hand drop. "I'd be stupid not to make sure, though. Arrogance is a liability."

He deserved the truth, not hints and scared, halfhearted admissions. "If I didn't love you both, this wouldn't be so fucking hard."

She caught his smile, just a flash of it as he planted one hand on the bar. All those bare, gorgeous muscles flexed as he vaulted over it in a move so effortless, he had his hands on her before her brain caught up to what was happening. He gripped her hips and hoisted her with the same ease, depositing her on the bar with his body wedged between her knees.

"Tell me what you want," he whispered, cupping her cheeks. "Don't think about what's easy, or even what's possible. Tell me what you'd want if you could have anything in the damn world."

She was the embodiment of greed, grasping and hungry. Covetous and insatiable. She would have been ashamed of herself, except that there was no room for that. Not here, and not now. "I want you
and
Ace," she whispered. "It's not fair. Other women have had you both for sex. Why can't I have you to love?"

Cruz smiled, his thumb smoothing back and forth across her cheek. "Ask me what I want."

He wasn't angry or sorrowful, and Rachel caught her breath. Only one reason for him to smile at her words, and his answer had the potential to change everything. "What do you want?"

"To have both of you to protect."

Her stomach fluttered. "What the hell did you see last night? I mean, I know what happened, and that you must have been there, but...what did it
look like
to you?"

His thumb shifted course, the rough pad dragging across her skin in slow motion before rasping over her lower lip. "Like getting left behind."

"Hardly." Her mouth moved beneath his thumb like a kiss. "Haven't you figured it out? Neither one of us can stop thinking about you."

"Even with his tongue in your mouth?"

Not an accusation--arousal. The way his voice heated as it wrapped around the words kindled an ache between her thighs, and Rachel moaned. "Even with his tongue in my mouth." She reached for his hands and guided them back to her hips. "With his lips on my skin. His fingers under my clothes."

His hands tightened, and he swayed forward, his lips so close to hers. "If I put
my
tongue in your mouth, will you think of him?"

Nothing short of a challenge, and Rachel felt herself responding to it, melting closer to him. "Every. Damn. Second."

"Maybe only half of them." He murmured the words against her mouth, and if Ace's kiss had started slow, Cruz's was the opposite. Fast and hot, lips parting over hers, his tongue slick and commanding, thrusting in search of hers with no mercy and no restraint.

Oh God.

He blocked out the world, but he sent her spinning so wildly that clinging to him would provide no purchase. So she wrapped her hands around the edge of the bar and held on.

When he bit her lip and growled--
growled
--even that wasn't enough. She whimpered, and he eased back, dragging his teeth along her lip until it popped free. He soothed the spot with one last lick before straightening.

That got her moving. She reached for him, but her fingers slipped across the sweat-slicked skin of his abdomen, and she swallowed. Hard. "You do this on purpose. Walk around half-naked."

His lips twitched. "Maybe."

"Definitely." She leaned in and teased her tongue over the muscled line of his chest. Salt, heat, and lust roared up, almost drowning out his groan as he sank his fingers into her hair.

Rachel choked on a moan and wiggled, trying to ease the tense ache. The only thing better would be Ace's fingers bumping his, tangling tight as he urged her to lick lower.

Cruz shuddered and pulled her away. "Not yet. Christ, this is hot, but I need you to trust me. I know what to do."

She trusted him more than herself and Ace put together, more than anyone. Cruz would always do the right thing, no matter what. "Okay."

He tilted her head back, and at least she wasn't the only one breathless and flushed. "Soon. I promise."

Oddly, it soothed her trembling. He'd never lie, never make a promise if he didn't know he could deliver. "I trust you, Cruz. With my life."

"Good." He brushed a final kiss against her forehead, carefully unwound his fingers from her hair, and took a step back. "Are you working tonight?"

"Taking the stage at ten." Her cheeks heated. "You gonna come watch me dance?"

His smile promised everything she'd asked for, and a whole world she could barely imagine. "Count on it."